


Tango Night

by heymacareyna



Category: Psy-Changeling - Nalini Singh
Genre: Dancing, DarkRiver, During Canon, F/M, Fluff, SnowDancer, Tango, canon until proven otherwise. minimum 20 sources required to disprove.
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-12
Updated: 2015-12-24
Packaged: 2018-05-06 09:41:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 15,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5412041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heymacareyna/pseuds/heymacareyna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"This is such a CAT dance."<br/>DarkRiver hosts a regular tango night that is initially cats-only, but as the cats mate, it gradually becomes a interpack event that allows the top dominants to hang out without a crisis.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In Which Sascha Succeeds and Faith Struggles

An hour after the weekly Pack cookoff, once the food comas had worn off, the crowd filtered into the back of the athletic center. The women had changed into dresses made of bright swirls of thin cloth, clearly designed to twirl without catching on the slender heels of their strappy, suede-soled stilettos. Sascha herself, here for the first time, wore a similar dress and heels that Tammy had helped her pick out, but she didn’t yet feel as comfortable in the ensemble as the more experienced cats looked.

 _I wonder,_ she thought, _if I can use Tk not to fall over._ Tk-Psy tended to be graceful—maybe she could pull a trick from their arsenal.

When she walked with Lucas into what she’d thought was a spare gym, she couldn’t help a gasp of pleased surprise—it wasn’t a gym at all but an actual ballroom, dimly lit and sprawling. White lights glowed from the ceiling in long strands, echoed in mirrors along three walls and the glass of a fourth wall composed solely of windows. The hardwood floor gleamed, enticing a few to practice before the real games started. Turns, twirls, dips—doubt clenched in Sascha’s heart. This was all new.

Picking up on the discomfort through the mating bond, Lucas squeezed her hand and nipped at her neck. “Stop thinking, kitten.”

Instinctively she pressed back against his chest for comfort. Packmates were laying claim to chairs, inspecting a lounge area for snacks and drinks; one of the techs headed for the crux of the stereo system. “We could have practiced.”

“And let you try to go Psy on me?” he teased. “Not a chance.”

He had a point, but she grumbled a little growl anyway. Surely a little practical overanalysis would have been better than this being-thrown-to-the-cats chaos. She could walk in heels perfectly well, but dancing in them was something else entirely. Especially when she was unfamiliar with even the basic steps of the tango, or any other dance, to be honest.

Amusement and love pulsed intertwined to her through the bond. “Come on,” he said when the first Latin song began to thrum around the room.

She had assumed it would take a while for the dancing to begin, but she had somehow forgotten to take into account changeling passion—they didn’t do anything by halves. Other pairs met them on the dance floor at the same time and got right into it. Tammy and Nate spun by at an unlikely speed, the healer pivoting perfectly around her mate’s legs.

Lucas led Sascha through the basic steps, his lead firm and clear. “Slow, slow, quick-quick slow,” he murmured in her ear. Her gaze laser-focused on her feet as she tried to match him. “T… A… NGO.”

She stumbled bringing her feet together, but he steadied her before she could fall.

“You’re fine.” They did the steps again, Sascha walking backward, and this time she kept her balance. “Good,” he purred, and she play-stepped on his toe for the hint of teasing in that word. He snapped his teeth in return.

She stumbled again, cheeks flushed. “Stop distracting me!”

“Stop being so distractable. T-A-NGO.”

She muttered the letters to the beat, trying to force her feet to keep the same time. _Apparently Tk isn’t enough for dancing._ Then she amended the thought, _No, it would be enough if it were stronger. For all the emotion that goes into dancing, you’d think an empath would have more natural talent._

Lucas raised her right hand and pushed it toward her. Sascha looked at it in confusion, and a few steps later he laughed. “That means you turn.”

“Oh, okay.” Quickly she turned, but she lost the beat and ended up colliding so sharply with his chest that he let out a surprised grunt. “Sorry!”

A noise in the back of his throat. He tugged her closer and smoothed his hands over her shoulders, arms, hips. “Re _lax,_ kitten. It’s an art, not a science. Soften and follow.”

Soften? She tensed and then relaxed each muscle group, bobbed a little on her knees, shook her whole body from her hips. “I’m softened,” she insisted. “But what if I step on your foot?”

“Just follow my lead and you’ll be fine,” he reassured her with the self-assurance of a cat who knew exactly what he was doing.

She took a deep breath. _Follow. Follow._ When he stepped forward, she slid her right foot back, then her left with his right. Back, side, close. It wasn’t elegant, but she didn’t stomp and she didn’t fall over, and pleasure warmed her mate’s eyes with an open smile at her success. She smiled back automatically, the emotion multiplying between them and disintegrating the last of her self-consciousness.

****

Unfortunately, Faith did not have the advantage of empathy when she arrived a few months later, and with Vaughn almost alpha-aggressive, she had little choice when it came time for tango night. Latin heels barely brought her up to a normal woman’s height, and she positively glared at Vaughn when he “suggested” she wear a form-fitting dress with a particularly short hemline. “I think you’re just trying to embarrass me.”

“Believe me,” he said, voice jaguar-low as he watched her try to tug the skirt lower, “embarrassing you is much lower on my list of priorities than getting you in a smoking hot dress.”

When her foresight abilities had suggested she invest in a few dresses, she must have been an inch shorter. Or maybe the fabric had shrunk in the back of the closet. She pulled harder. The hemline came down, but so did the neckline.

His eyes went golden cat. With a slow smile he compromised, “Maybe we’ll save this dress for bedroom use.”

Eyeing him with play suspicion, she turned so he could unzip the back for her. “You just don’t want anyone else to see me.”

“Damn straight.” He pulled the zipper down with a seductive slowness at odds with the efficiency with which he then peeled the dress off her and then tossed her gleefully onto the bed. “Let’s practice some of those hip movements you’ll need to master.”

She rolled her eyes… until he stripped off his shirt and used his hands and mouth to show her exactly what he wanted.

Two hours later, he dragged himself off the bed and, in ragged breaths, declared her an expert. They showered off the sweat from the lengthy and in-depth “practicing,” pulled on dance clothes (which included a more reasonable dress on Faith’s part), and headed over to the DarkRiver tango night they were about to be late for.

He pulled her onto the dance floor the second they’d slipped into their dancing shoes, and he counted the beat for her under his breath. “I can’t do it with everyone watching,” she whispered, a confession only for his ears. Frankly, she wasn’t sure she could do it at all, audience or no audience.

He pressed a reassuring kiss to her temple, then tapped her on the tip of the nose. “Just look at me,” he told her. “I’m your lead—all you have to do is follow. Trust me.”

She did trust him. Implicitly. So when he started, she moved with him. She had to stretch her legs into long steps to match his stride; she could only hope that it looked professional and seductive, not as awkward and gangly as it felt.

When she tried to go for a sleek motion, she missed one of the main counts, and his attempt to turn her left her at a physically awkward angle, very out of position. “Sorry, I messed up the turn.”

Without hesitation he leaned in and nipped her on the jaw. “There, now we’re even. Keep your head up, it’ll help.”

Tucking her through a turn she hadn’t been prepared for, he laughed at her quick skipping steps to get back in position. “Vaughn,” she chastised, cheeks hot already. His mirth seemed only to point out her shortcomings.

“You’re doing fine, Red,” he purred. To back up his words, he sent her a quick mental image of the dance from his perspective—she was all legs and curves, brow creased slightly in concentration but a tentative smile curving her lips. A sight for sore eyes… and a reassuring stroke to her already sore ego.

Ducking her head before remembering that she was supposed to keep it up, she followed his hand into another turn, and this time she kept the beat. He gave her a secret grin, one only for her.

“Why do the men lead?” she asked once she felt comfortable enough to dance and talk at the same time. “This is sexist.”

He snorted. “When you know how to tango, _you_ can lead.”

She laughed. “Point taken. I will hold you to that, though.”

“Fair enough. I’m good enough to survive a little following. And if it goes terribly, I’ll just make you make it up to me afterward.” The jaguar flashed playfully in his eyes and smile.

“That doesn’t sound like much incentive for me to try hard,” she teased, and he growled. As if to show off or to spite her, he flung her around him in several pivoting turns. The insides of their legs stayed pressed together, a hot contact used to maintain balance, and the white lightning in her was well aware of how close they were, even though she was maintaining the proper frame. When they came to a stop, he used the pause to press an insatiable kiss to her lips.

“This dance is performed with the partners extremely close to each other,” she observed once she’d caught her breath.

“I know,” he rumbled, the words a purr. “Isn’t it great?”

She reached up and nuzzled into his neck. “I’ll admit I could get used to it.”

With his satisfied smirk, they stepped together.

And it might have looked stunning had she not stepped with the wrong foot and accidentally stomped on his toes. The second she felt his shoe under hers, she jumped away, but the damage was done. He winced and shook out the wounded foot.

“I’m sorry! Right foot goes first, I know. Head up. Soft knees. Rolling hips.” Her face burned with embarrassment. Everyone else in the room looked so graceful, and here she was, keeping her jaguar from having a decent time tonight. She clenched her jaw against the frustrated tears burning the backs of her eyes. She would _not_ cry. She’d defeated the Cassandra Spiral; she was not going to be beaten by ballroom dancing. But did it have to be such a battle? She just wanted to enjoy herself!

“Whoa, baby, hang on.” He pulled her off the dance floor, cupped her face in both his hands. “Don’t feel bad. Every person in here started off stepping on toes and counting the beat wrong. Me included. I danced like Frankenstein’s _monster_ when I first started.”

Despite herself, she laughed at the mental image of her big mate lumbering around the floor with two left feet.

“This is embarrassing,” she told him. Part of her hoped he’d have a magical solution; the other part wanted him to let her out of this, to just let her quit for once.

Of course, he wasn’t a quitter, and neither was she. But he softened. “Okay,” he agreed. “Let’s go practice in private.” They were still so freshly mated that when he led her out of the ballroom, their packmates wolf-whistled and teased them about needing to practice in private _all night long_.

Vaughn took her to a small practice room a few doors down, where they moved through the most basic steps over and over until they began to become part of her muscle memory. From there, he showed her in the mirror how posture would help her balance, and they went triply slow through a few simple turns and cross-body movements so that she could get a feel for them. Once she finally grasped the concepts, they sped up to normal time, and she only stepped on his foot once in the entire three hours they practiced there together.

Through the next week, Faith ran through the steps repetitively, both alone and with Vaughn. She listened to tango music and tapped out the beat with one finger. She wore pumps to get used to the feeling of moving in higher, slimmer heels. He gave her enthusiastic feedback every time she made progress in her ability to roll her hips (especially when she did so in the short black dress that he loved).

When the two of them came back the next Friday for another tango night, they kicked butt.


	2. In Which Ashaya is Warned, But Not Enough

When Ashaya mated with Dorian, Sascha, Faith, and Tally all but ambushed her after the week-long ceremony concluded. The Psy scientist revealed no signs of alarm at their serious expressions, but with the extensive experience she had in hiding her emotions, that meant next to nothing.

“Here’s the deal,” Tally said, folding her arms over her chest and leaning in with an almost mom-like concerned expression on her face. “Tango is a thing.”

Ashaya processed this, then looked to the more reserved Faith for a more Psy-like explanation.

“DarkRiver hosts a tango night on Friday nights, every two weeks or so,” the redhead explained. “The men have an unreasonable but overwhelming need to show off their mates in swirly skirts and pointy heels. Apparently it’s the most catlike dance ever to exist, so they’ve claimed it as their own. Dorian will insist on you going with him. He will insist on you getting dressed up. And no matter how little experience you have, he _will_ take you onto the dance floor and make you do complicated choreography you’ve never tried before.”

The scientist considered this. “We’re all running double duty with the Human Alliance and the Council and everything else going on. Is there really time to spare for two nights a month or more of dancing?”

Sascha opened her mouth to explain, but unexpectedly, it was Faith who offered the first word in defense of the habit. “That’s exactly why it’s necessary.” She looked out to the sun-dappled forest around them, where her jaguar was running patrol at that very moment. “Predatory changelings will run themselves to the ground trying to keep everyone safe. Taking four hours off every two weeks is the _least_ that they need to stay sane.”

“That makes sense.” Ashaya pulled out her organizer, opened her schedule, and tapped in a placeholder for tango nights. “Thank you for warning me so I can prepare. I’ll look for some references and try to have at least a baseline established before my mate, as you put it, insists on dragging me into complicated choreography.”

Sascha and Tally laughed openly; Faith’s eyes creased in a smile that was growing to become more and more frequent with her time in the pack. “Don’t get us wrong. They have fun teaching us. A little too much fun at times, if you ask me. Prepare yourself.”

Ashaya’s first tango night was that Friday, so she had less time than anticipated to indoctrinate herself on the basics of ballroom dancing before Dorian ambushed her. He “helped” her into an ice-blue dress he’d picked out himself (his help included a lot of petting and minimal actual dressing), despite her logical complaints. Thankfully, Keenan was currently engrossed in an animated TV show in the other room and wouldn’t pop in.

“Are the skirts really necessary?” she asked when he was paying special attention to the slice of thigh bared by a slit in the flared fabric.

“Oh yes,” he purred with one more kiss, and another, this one higher. She gasped at the attention. “According to science, they are _very_ much necessary.”

Once they arrived, it pleased her to be able to tell him that she already knew the basics of the tango. He brightened—he had clearly expected to start from square one as Lucas and Vaughn had. “Great! Let’s go, then! How much do you know—promenade? cross-body lead? open fan?”

There was so much information she hadn’t yet been able to access. Had this really been a good idea? She almost shuddered, but she trusted her mate. “I know the steps, the basic turn, and yes, the cross-body lead.”

He positively purred. “Sugar, you have just made my night. Let’s go.” Holding both her hands, he led her out to the dance floor, where the other couples were already halfway through the first song.

“They’ve already started. Shouldn’t we wait until the next song?” Her hesitation was borne partly of practicality, partly of embarrassment. Faith had briefly described her initial string of failures during her first night attempting to dance, and although Ashaya had practiced with Psy determination, she hadn’t had a partner, and she’d been judging herself, guessing at whether or not she matched the training videos she’d found. She didn’t want to disappoint Dorian, who seemed to think she’d mastered the beginner’s level when in reality she’d only just begun to touch on it.

But Dorian shook his head at her suggestion that they wait. “It doesn’t matter. We just have to start on the first beat. And I am an excellent counter.” He said this in a smug tone.

“I bet you can go all the way up to one hundred,” she teased him, echoing Keenan’s current favorite accomplishment. He growled, and she kissed him in an attempt at the charm that came so naturally to him.  The bragging wasn’t without merit, though. The videos had included repeated reminders that both man and woman needed to be able to keep the beat in order to stay in sync. Ashaya was no musician, but she could usually pick out the beat in the music her son and mate listened to, and if Dorian counted well and led clearly, it would help her immensely. “I’ll be relying on you.” Serious trust.

Thankfully he didn’t take it lightly. “As long as you actually let me lead.”

“I’ll do my best.” Their playful battles for dominance served them well in their personal lives, but on the dance floor it would only disrupt them and everyone else who had to maneuver around them. She could allow herself to trust and follow in this situation. However, she knew it would likely require effort and diligence on her part to keep from trying to anticipate and direct him, even though she knew he had infinitely more experience than she did.

His hands went to her full hips, and, allowing her to stall no more, he tugged her toward him. He tapped out the beat with two fingers and then drew her up into position. She stood “in his pocket,” as one video had phrased it: off-centered from him, off to the left. Head and chest up and out, she held up her right arm to maintain the appropriate distance, but his hand on her back held her a little closer, a more intimate, sensual frame.

He walked forward, and she walked back. Three steps, then two to the side. He strode smoothly, his hips rotating with a grace both natural and practice-perfected. In contrast, her own movements were tangibly stilted, stiff, almost robotic. She could feel her own body stiffening with every step in which he exhibited such exuberant perfection, but she didn’t know how to fix it.

Her poker face was flawless, she knew, but he saw right through her. He nuzzled her between the end of that song and the next. “You’re doing fine.”

“I’m not doing it right.” The words shot out of her mouth, frustrated, self-deprecating bullets. She didn’t like to think of herself as proud, but she had wanted to come into this with some level of skill, since she’d learned some of it beforehand. But he was so talented, as he was with everything he touched, that it only accentuated how flat her own comprehension was.

His hands went to her hips again, twisting her round and round, trying to soften and ease her movements. Her knees locked without conscious thought, making the desired soft rolling motion into a straight, stiff circle. To relax her he petted her, but it didn’t make a difference.

Frustration sharpened her tone. “My hips don’t _move_ that way, Dorian.”

One eyebrow popping upward, he gave her a heavy-lidded smoldering look. “They did last night. You’ll do great.”

 _Charm won’t get you out of this one. I’m off and I know it._ She clenched her jaw. “Maybe if you give me a formula for the rotation of—”

“If you think about it too hard, you’ll overstep or understep. Just follow my lead and try not to overthink it.”

“Dancing is so… tactile. It’s all body. I miss the cerebral.”

As a fellow nerd, he understood her struggle with overanalysis. But he also wasn’t going to let her throw in the towel just because this was outside her usual realm of expertise. “Bend one knee when you’re rolling the other hip. Left for right, right for left. Knee goes down, hip goes up.”

She took a deep breath. Fastened that tip in her brain. “Okay. I got it.” Knee down, hip up. The next song started, and as they walk-danced together, she intentionally bent her knees to roll her hips—and miracle of all miracles, it softened her gait. The hard crease in her brow that she’d thought might be perpetual smoothed out in surprised pleasure. “Oh! It worked!”

He grinned. “You bet. You’re a natural.”

“Flattery will get you nowhere.” But a smile tweaked at her lips. “Okay. Let’s see what else you can teach me.”

The leopard flashed in his eyes. Hot and ready to play. “Shaya, you really shouldn’t say things like that.”

At first she thought he meant it as an innuendo, but then he took his kid gloves off, and she realized how much he’d been holding back in his dancing. Dorian moved like a dream, every line of his body sinuous and sinful. He dramatized, playful for the benefit of her and her alone, although she heard some of the packmates sitting out laugh at his antics too. Now that she had the mechanics of the dance down, she started to relax a little, and he flew her through more complicated moves than she would have thought possible, and he didn’t even seem to need to think about them, just pulled them casually out of his sleeve, one right after another. And his lead was so clear, she didn’t have to wonder what she was supposed to do—she just _did_ it. And it was glorious.

“Dorian,” she gasped though an under-arm turn blending into a twinkle and promenade into open fan—“Dorian, you’re _really_ good.” A qualitative, vague understatement to be sure. She felt as if she was all motion, all body, an impossible feat he had somehow accomplished.

His eyes creased with a pleased, smug smile, a cat who enjoyed being stroked by his mate. “Oh, tell me more.”

“This is… Oh!” He swept her through a pivoting turn. “This is better than I imagined. How long have you been doing this?” She felt a brief flash of jealousy over the many past partners he’d likely awed with these same moves, but then it was gone. They hadn’t been mated at that time; now they were. He was all hers, body and soul. As she was his.

“Since I was smaller than Keenan,” Dorian replied easily. “You know my latency pushed me to master every art and science possible just to prove I could, and that included dancing. And Mercy and I practiced together all the time, as part of our agility and teamwork workout routines. And for fun. Mostly for fun.” He laughed and, with the end of the song, dipped her low over his bent knee.

Trusting him not to drop her, she let her head fall back.

An open-mouthed kiss at her bare throat. Then he drew her back up to face him, and she pulled him in for a proper kiss, despite the fact that she already needed to catch her breath. “Thank you,” she whispered. She spent so much time in her laboratory, in her own head, that she rarely got to feel as feminine and elegant and suave as she did at this very moment.

“Thank _you_ ,” he countered. “Do you need to sit the next one out, or are you good to dance another?”

Ashaya shared a grin with him. “Another.” She wasn’t accustomed to dancing in heels, but the balls of her feet didn’t yet hurt from the unusual use. She planned to ride this out as long as she could.

The ache did eventually come, much to her disappointment. He set her at their table before making a beeline for the lounge, where he intended to pile up two plates of food for them to shovel into their mouths. _Making up the caloric deficit,_ he called it when he presented her with her heaping serving, and he laughed when she pointed out that they hadn’t burned _that_ many calories. Granted, she dug in with relish anyway. Keenan, who’d been dancing joyfully with Noor, came over to sit on his mommy’s lap and steal some of her cheese and crackers; unable to resist skin privileges with their son, Dorian ruffled his hair and slipped him some chocolate under the table.

Ashaya startled a little at the beginning of an old pop song she recognized—“Toxic” by Britney Spears. “This isn’t a tango song,” she said to Dorian in confusion.

Lucas and Sascha, who had been sitting at the table with them, laughed and rose to their feet. “Want to show her how it’s done?” the alpha purred to his mate.

The empath stroked her fingers through his hair. “Oh yes, let’s.”

Curious as to how they would pull this off, Ashaya watched them intently, and it quickly became clear that she had been mistaken: a pair could in fact tango this song. Sascha, who’d had almost a year and a half to hone her dancing abilities in this warm environment, slipped up once or twice but on the whole danced as sleekly and playfully as the cats. Ashaya used the break to eye the other woman’s foot positions, her posture, her methods of controlling her movements and momentum. She made mental notes of things to try once she was back out there.

From Sascha’s point of view, though, the problem wasn’t the movements themselves: it was their repercussions in the all too floaty fabric of the new dress she’d worn tonight. Every spin sent the hem higher up her thigh, high enough that it was borderline risqué. So naturally Lucas was taking every opportunity to spin her.

“This skirt flares up too much,” she whispered to him after he’d made it clear he wasn’t going to stop anytime soon. “Stop twirling me.”

But instead of going all possessive like she’d thought he would at the suggestion that others could see up her dress, his eyes flashed to the panther and he grinned. “Challenge accepted, kitten.”

She eyed him suspiciously, and that was when he scooped her up into his arms. “Lucas, put me down!”

“Only if we keep spinning,” he insisted, his gaze wandering to the lush curves that would be exposed by the swirling of the skirt.

She smacked him lightly on the chest. “I’m serious. Down. And no more spinning. I feel like I’m giving everyone a peep show.”

“You’re not. Just me.” This was actually probably the truth, given the cut of the fabric and the fact that dancing packmates had eyes only for their mates. But she didn’t want to test that hypothesis tonight. And she was thankful when he did put her down and pick up the dance, minus the excessive spins and turns.

Then Lucas took her into a dip that bordered on melting her skeleton, and she felt rather than saw his free hand caress up her bared thigh. “Giant dips are not an acceptable alternative!”

“From this angle it is.” Her left leg supported her weight, but her right leg was naturally curled up toward his waist, and he was plainly enjoying the view.

“I’m going to destroy you when we get home.”

His cat eyes flicked up to meet her own night sky gaze. “Promise?”

“Lucas!” She laughed despite herself. “You are impossible. Remind me why I’m mated to you.”

“Because I’m sexy as sin. Luckily you’re hot as hell, so we balance each other out well.” He licked her, and she wriggled with a giggle. Finally he brought her up out of the vulnerable dip, and they moved right back into the dance with the flawless synchronicity of long-term partners who knew each other’s tells, who knew every inch of each other’s mental and physical and psychic presence.

Dorian’s hand tunneled into Ashaya’s unbound electric curls, gently scratched her sensitive scalp. She leaned into the petting. He followed her gaze to the alpha pair and told her confidently, “We’ll get there. Don’t worry. You have the smoothest, most advanced dancer in DarkRiver for your teacher.”

“Don’t forget the most _humble_ ,” she teased him. Keenan laughed through a mouthful of cookies, and Dorian pretended to be deeply wounded, and she wondered if she had ever been this happy.


	3. In Which Tango Night Includes Its First Wolf

When Mercy and Riley mated, no one knew quite what to do about tango night, though thankfully they had a few weeks to figure it out. He was a _wolf_ , and this was a _cat_ dance. But at the same time, they were a mated pair, and no one would deny her the chance to dance with her mate. This, the exhilaration and heat of the sexy smooth dance that straddled Latin and ballroom, was one of her favorite pastimes. So by the time the next cookoff and tango night rolled around, it had been collectively decided that she would bring him, and no one would say anything about it. Except maybe a few sideways jokes about playing fetch. But those weren’t personal—just standard cat practice.

The lieutenant’s solid presence claimed attention from the moment he entered, even aside from his distinctly canine scent. No one stopped dancing, but several sidelined dancers stared openly. Money changed hands, shameless bets having been taken on whether or not the Kincaid man would actually show up tonight.

Riley leaned into Mercy, and she leaned right back. “This is a cat thing,” he muttered in her ear, grumpy and out of his comfort zone.

“Well,” she told him with characteristically feline arrogance, “it’s about to become a cat-plus-Riley thing.”

He had no real objections, so she taught him the basics with efficient speed and then dragged him out to put them to practice. His steps came down heavier than they should have at first, and though he was by no means clumsy, he lacked some of the innate grace of the DarkRiver men. Yet she wouldn’t have traded him for anyone, even the remarkably skilled Dorian, who was currently making his way down his mate’s body with single-minded determination.

“Lighter,” she suggested in a lower, more intimate voice as she curved around him, and the flash of wolf amber showed that she was getting through to the animal—a positive development. Changelings as a rule danced better with their animals close to the surface, simply because it knocked away the human’s complicated overthinking and brought out the leopard’s (or, in his case, wolf’s) natural agility.

The animal and soldier in him taking over, he bent his knees to lower his center of gravity and walked heel to toe, a strong but careful tread that balanced him better than the stilted stomping from before. She purred— _this is more like it_. Her clever mate picked things up quickly, and her cat rolled in his scent, in the fact that his ambidextrousness expanded to include the oh so feline dance that she loved. He was a wolf, to be sure… but he knew how to play with his cat, and that was becoming marvelously obvious here in the ballroom studio.

She led him as he gained his footing in this new world, but as soon as he felt confident enough, he took the reins. The smallest adjustment of pushing, of the way his hand held hers, and she immediately knew what he was doing. But she didn’t protest. Leading required as much practice as following, and she would never strangle a dominant man, much less her mate, by insisting he play the submissive and follow all the time. By the same token, though, _she_ had no intention of following all the time either. It would be a balancing act, a give and take, exactly like the rest of their relationship.

“You learn fast,” she complimented him between short breaths when he blew them through promenade and open fan after she showed it to him once.

His laughter rumbled low in his throat. “You wouldn’t believe the kind of chaos I’ve had to learn to keep up with,” he teased her.

She laughed, delighted. “Just wait til we have some cubs to herd around.”

He pretended to glare at her. “Kitty cat, I think you mispronounced ‘pups.’”

“Pupcubs,” she compromised with a grin that they both knew meant they were agreeing to disagree.

He considered this and nodded. “I can accept that.” Then a thought made his eyes light up with humor. “Would they be Snow leopards?”

It took her a moment to catch the blend of SnowDancer’s name and DarkRiver’s species, and then she groaned, which brought a mischievous smile to his face. “That’s a terrible pun,” she complained. “I’m so ashamed right now.” But she leaned her temple against his and laughed, warmed by the sense of humor that few other people got to see from him.

****

Coming over straight from work, Riley shouldered through the ballroom doors and immediately looked around for his mate— _there she is._ Sweeping through a dramatic flourish with her best friend, Dorian. Her red hair was braided and knotted up around her head, showcasing her elegant neck and sleek white dress. His wolf preened with pride for her.

The pair finished the song with a low dip, and when Dorian let Mercy up, she looked right at Riley and lit up. Saying something (thanks? goodbye?), she hurried across the dance floor to greet him with an enthusiastic kiss.

“Maybe I’ll be late more often,” he deadpanned when she let him take a breath.

She grinned, her leopard flashing in her eyes. “I wasn’t sure you’d be able to make it. Come on.” Her hand found his, and she stepped them into frame and into the dance as the next song began.

“You’re not leading,” he insisted lowly, pushing back against her.

“You need to get into dance mode,” she countered. “I’ve been here for an hour already. Chill.”

“I don’t ‘chill.’” He led her in a turn, and though her eyes narrowed, she followed it through without missing a beat. But as soon as they were back in position, she took the lead again. _“Mercy.”_

 _“Riley,”_ she replied, her tone as playfully seductive as his was frustrated. Her lieutenant sometimes needed a reminder that his sentinel could match him. And she liked leading—she could spin herself ten times in a row without getting dizzy. Which she did then, just for kicks.

“This is such a cat dance,” he sighed, not for the first time since he’d started attending the DarkRiver tango nights with her.

“Poor wolf pup.” She leaned toward him in a long corté, then took a step back and drew him towards herself in a mirror-image move. “Needs to learn some flexibility.” As an example, she led them into a series of quick progressive pivot turns, inner thighs and knees pressed against each other as they whirled. Not for the first time, his sober grace surprised her—he was so big and solid, it was sometimes easy to forget this side of him existed in full force. The side that, despite his complaints, could totally keep up with the demands of the feline tango.

His eyes went wolf-amber when she brought them to a fifth-position break, but he didn’t challenge her dominance again. If anything, he became a smoother follower, moving through every lead with confidence. Long steps advanced them counterclockwise around the room until the popping Latin beat rose to an end, at which point Mercy spun them out for a dramatic open fan, feet pointed and arms flared out away from each other. A more advanced move, expertly executed.

Breath coming a little quickly, they shared a grin, and then Riley tugged Mercy toward himself and dipped her so low the thick knot of her hair grazed the floor. She let her head fall back, baring her throat, and he pressed an open kiss to her pulse. A few packmates laughed and wolf-whistled.

“Song’s over,” he told her, the words subvocal. His expression revealed nothing, but his eyes gleamed with the message: _Game’s on._

She grinned.

He hauled her back upright, turning her in tightly so she ended up pressed to his chest. Their frame shifted infinitesimally, hands adjusting, weight redistributing to the opposite feet.

And then Riley took the first step forward.


	4. In Which Riley Is No Longer the Only Wolf in Attendance and Hawke Has to Share

When Riley slid into his car for the tango night a few months later, two familiar scents followed him through the garage and into the vehicle—his brother and his fellow lieutenant. The recently mated pair rarely separated outside of work commitments, and apparently bothering him was no exception.

“What do you need,” he sighed as they slid into his back seat. It wasn’t a question.

“The Wall is going to dance the tango,” Drew answered as if it should have been obvious. “I need to see it with my own two eyes. And possibly a video camera, in case I need blackmail material.”

Indigo said nothing, but her namesake eyes creased with her smirk, and the tracker’s hand stroked the back of her neck in unconscious need for touch. Riley’s eye caught the slow, tracing movement, and his mating bond tugged at him in Mercy’s absence.

“Start the car,” his middle sibling said, eyes bright with interest in the night’s entertainment—namely, watching his brother attempt to keep up with a bunch of highly experienced cats at an artistic game. “Let’s go. Indy and I are looking forward to this.”

“You need dancing shoes.” He pointed this out not because he actually thought they planned to join him on the dance floor but because he would use any weapon in his arsenal to get them out of the car. “And fifteen dollars each to get in the door.” Half the time the cats didn’t bother to collect the entrance fee, but every so often they did, just to offset the costs of food and electricity and general upkeep, so partygoers made sure to bring the money every time just in case this was the paying week.

In sync, Drew and Indigo held up thin cloth bags printed with the logo of the local shoemaker who specialized in Latin and ballroom. “We’re good,” Indigo said. “Now drive.”

Riley stared flatly at them in the rearview mirror.

They didn’t budge.

Drew flashed his most winning smile. “Whenever you’re ready.”

Growling, Riley twisted the key in the ignition and resigned himself to dealing with the overbearing sensuality of new mates for the next fifteen minutes.

As soon as he walked into the ballroom, he separated from his brother and scanned the room for Mercy. He stopped to say hi to Dorian, who acted as a third big brother to Brenna and so had ingratiated himself to both Riley and Drew—and then Mercy popped up at his side out of nowhere, grinning and offering him a bowl of chili. “Stock up on your protein, wolfie. We’re going big tonight.”

“Go big or go home,” Dorian agreed with a glowing glance at Ashaya, who was lacing on her dance shoes and watching him with equal excitement to get out there.

Riley readily accepted the food and spooned half of it into his mouth before he sat down to pull on his ballroom shoes. He had one shoe half on when he looked up to survey how much room there was on the dance floor—and his eyebrows jumped at the unexpected sight in front of him. Drew and Indigo striding out into the middle of the place, heads high and grins wide.

Mercy’s gaze followed his. “Do they know how to tango?” she asked him in surprise, and at that moment the other couple picked up the frame with the effortlessness of practice and blended seamlessly into the music. “Oh. I guess they do.”

“I thought they only wanted to come to annoy me,” he admitted with a rueful grin. “Looks like that may have only been _part_ of the reason.” Because his brother and his mate both looked like they knew what they were doing.

She nodded in slow agreement, and then her gaze slitted back to him. She cocked her head. “Hurry up with those shoes, and we’ll kick their butts.”

He’d never before tied his shoes so quickly. “Let’s go.”

They didn’t wait for the next song; they weaved their way right onto the already crowded dance floor, and Mercy let Riley start them off without argument. He’d learned uncommonly fast, and she knew he could think fast on his feet. More than good enough to lead in a tango battle against the other couple.

It took seconds, less, for Drew and Indigo to notice how intentionally Mercy and Riley were showing off, keeping close enough to push but far enough not to risk a physical collision. The pair of wolves shared a look. _Time to play._ Immediately they stepped up their performance level from stunning low-intermediate to flashy upper-intermediate. Indy kept her arms loose to follow the quick movements he brought her through, not stopping to doubt or think, drawing out every flourish. Long, low cortés made Andrew’s lake-blue eyes flicker back and forth to the wolf’s, and she nipped him playfully on the jaw. “Having fun yet?”

“Oh, _tons,”_ he promised in an undertone, and he whirled her up and out into a traveling turn that ended in an up close and personal dip.

She chuckled and rewarded him with a kiss on the upswing. “Very good.”

“I know I am,” he joked, and she swatted at him before he claimed another kiss. “But in fairness, so are you.”

“Good cover.”

He shrugged guilelessly and fluttered his absurdly long, dark eyelashes. “I’m told I can be charming.”

She shrugged too, in playful retaliation. “Eh,” she teased.

Then Mercy and Riley spun by, wearing smug _we’ve got this in the bag_ expressions, and Drew and Indigo saved their banter for _after_ they’d shown up the rival pair.

*****

Sienna’s time in DarkRiver introduced her to tango within twenty-four hours. She immediately fell in love—it was a fun way to use the physical skills she’d been forced to learn during her soldier training, and with more wolves joining every week, it was an acceptable way for the top dominants in both packs to hang out without a crisis. Her rank was relatively low, but in personality she matched them well enough to merge into the occasional conversation. Hawke didn’t usually attend, which meant that on one hand, she ached to search him out and soak in his presence but that on the other hand, she was able to focus and dance without feeling psychically torn in two and half on fire. As a simpler pleasure, she did get to catch up with Drew and Indigo and Riley without having to brave the den.

She spent most of her time dancing with the older teenagers and young barely-adult soldiers, her friends in mischief and mayhem. Kit would have kept her at his side if she’d let him, but his tendencies toward alpha possessiveness didn’t sit well with her, and she made it clear every time he was starting to toe the line again. Luckily, though, none of the DarkRiver guys (Kit included) riled her up the way the SnowDancer alpha did, so she was in no danger of losing control. In fact, things with her X-fire were calmer than ever. She only hoped the peace would last… even though she knew in her heart that it wouldn’t.

Then the mating dance roared into being, and the next time she showed up in the DarkRiver studio, she had a white-blond alpha at her side and a psychic filter for her ability. She could not think of a single thing making her unhappy.

Knowing her mate wouldn’t want to look at a disadvantage in cat territory, she had worked with him on developing his tango skills beforehand, and the two of them had no hesitation in showing up to show off a little. Or a lot. Depending on how many of each other’s buttons Lucas and Hawke pushed.

Kit waved her over the second she stepped into the studio, and she waved back despite (or maybe partially because of) the sour look that narrowed Hawke’s eyes. _The mating is still fresh,_ she reminded herself when she was tempted to roll her own eyes. She could be generous when he was being ridiculous for good reason, and being mere weeks into a mating certainly counted as good reason. She knew his animal was still riding him like nobody’s business, and he had been making an honest effort at not being too obnoxious about it, so she would give him some leeway.

Pulling Hawke onto the dance floor the moment they’d changed shoes, Sienna danced the first three songs with him without stopping for water or socializing, but then she needed a few minutes to rest her feet. They sat down at the same table as the three Kincaids and their mates, and then he lifted her onto his lap, a clear _stand down_ signal for the few remaining juveniles who were a little slow on the uptake.

“I love these shoes,” he contemplated in her ear, fingers running down her left calf to caress the strappy black Latin heels. “Are you sure you can’t wear them all the time?”

Snorting, she ran one hand through his hair. “No, I told you, it’ll ruin the suede.” On second thought, there was a lot to be said for catering to an alpha wolf’s accessory preferences. It had served her very well so far. As a compromise she added, “But I’ll see what I can do about finding some regular shoes that look like these.”

He bared his teeth in an approving grin that was the wrong side of feral. Responding heat flared in her stomach. Mmm, she was going to make that shoe shopping a priority. This was a win-win situation if she’d ever seen one.

Drew returned from the dance he’d claimed with Brenna and held out his hand to Sienna, the next “little sister” in line. “How about it?” he offered with a charming grin.

The balls of her feet were feeling sufficiently refreshed, so she squeezed Hawke’s bicep reassuringly before taking Drew’s extended hand. She loved her surrogate older brother— _all_ of them. Her life in the pack certainly had extended her family circle.

“Our esteemed leader still treating you right?” he checked as they settled into the frame.

She smiled over his shoulder. The alpha was stealing potato chips off Riley’s plate and watching them dance. When they made eye contact, he relaxed a little. “Of course.”

Drew chuckled and took the first stride forward. “Yeah, you wouldn’t take anything less, would you.”

“Nope.” Her smile widened. She still sometimes found it hard to believe how far she’d come. How much she’d developed past the stranglehold of Silence and the Psy social standards, borne of real psychic need but expanded to cage her entire person. Even though she still took time to warm up to people, she found herself truly open with her packmates and friends, and that was far more than she ever would have expected under Ming’s thumb.

When she finished with Drew, Hawke stood and took her right back out, holding her closer than he needed to. “I need room in the frame,” she protested, but the growl under his breath made her sigh. “Fine. I’ll just bump into your chest every two steps. No problem.” Heavy sarcasm, but it didn’t sway him. Stupid stubborn man. Well, it wouldn’t be pretty if he kept this up, but at least she knew how to compensate. She drew herself up into the proper posture, arched away from him, and stiffened her left arm to maintain what little space she had left. This was as good as it was going to get, with him insisting on such close quarters.

Kit passed casually by on his way to the snack bar in the lounge, and his return stroll was even more painfully “casual.” Yet he didn’t stop to talk. _He might have the scent of a future alpha,_ she considered, _but it’s a **current** alpha who refuses to drop his hands from my hips, so I can see how that might be a little off-putting._

The leopard boy set his food down and then meandered back over for the third time in as many minutes. “Sin, you wanna go?” His gaze flicked to Hawke, but he made a valiant effort at asking _her_ the question, not her mate, and she appreciated that. Definitely an effort worth rewarding.

Just out of curiosity, though, she first glanced at her mate. He looked as though he’d swallowed a bug. _Oh, he’ll be fine_. She laughed and offered her hand to Kit. “Yeah, sounds good.” She patted her mate on the cheek. “Don’t miss me too much.”

Scowling, he swiped at her, but she danced out of reach with another laugh.

Kit let her hold the frame right, gave her clear leads for each new move, moved sleekly and smoothly. He knew how to dance, but even with his advanced skills and almost lifelong experience, there was something absent. She missed dancing with her mate. Enjoyed this for what it was, to be sure, but preferred her stupid stubborn man.

When the song ended, Kit walked her back to her table and then, looking at the next table to their left, perked up. “Awesome, Evie’s here.” Submissives, as naturally eager and talented followers, were coveted dance partners. Between one word and the next, he was over there, charming the girl into the next dance as Tai, who’d accompanied her, glowered.

Sienna sat down in Hawke’s empty seat—he was out with Indigo, she saw, while Drew danced with Brenna. She embraced the moment to rest her feet, but the second he returned, she ran her hand up his chest and tugged him down for a lingering kiss. “Sit for a second,” she whispered against his lips, and he sat with a thud that rattled the table.

Barely parting from his mouth, one arm draped around his neck, she extended one leg over his lap. A private complaint, for his ears alone: “My calves hurt.” A gesture of trust, one of many between mates. She didn’t like to admit that she was out of practice in dancing; it was almost offensive in DarkRiver circles.

He eyed her, knowing full well the implications of the statement, and he didn’t tease her or draw attention to her, only rubbed hard small circles up her leg and in the arch of her foot. The massage made her sigh in relief, a smile curving her lips, and she rubbed his tense shoulders in return. The intimate skin privileges bolstered, reinforced, the mating bond and the love pulsing in it, no matter that this wasn’t a sexual context. Mates were best friends, first and foremost.

Also, conveniently, dance partners.

Once he’d worked out the worst of her cramps, they went back out onto the floor, more than ready to compete with (and beat) the cats at their own game.


	5. In Which AzureSun Visits and Lucas Unwillingly Reminisces

When half of AzureSun came for a diplomatic visit, it was only natural to extend them an invitation to tango night, which during their stay became generic Latin night. Salsa, rumba, tango, bachata, it was all fair game, and anyone would be hard-pressed to get any other type of music on the speakers. No one begrudged the Brazilians their music; it was a chance to practice variations that they didn’t always have time to get around to. Mercy in particular got a lot of floor time to dance with her relatives and friends, but the leopards socialized with all the charm of their American counterparts, and no one remained a stranger for long.

Eduardo and Joaquin, who’d made several lady friends in their brief stay to hit up Mercy, were in especially high demand. Their dance skills and their accents probably played equal parts in the veritable line of women who wanted to have their turn at them. The redhead herself allowed them the restricted skin privileges inherent in dancing, and even _that_ was only because they fully acknowledged her mating. They might have been stubborn, but they weren’t stupid either.

Isabella took Lucas out for a lively round of salsa, and he didn’t make the mistake of treating her like she was fragile. She gave him a run for his money, well practiced and in great shape even for a younger woman, and he had to go get a glass of water once they finished. “Your grandmother has worn me out, and it’s only eight!” he play-complained to Mercy, who had no sympathy. She herself had long been on the wrong end of Isabella’s endless energy and perseverance, and it pleased her to laugh at someone else for a change.

Given his size, Riley had particular trouble with the tiny, quick steps of salsa, and he needed a break besides, so his mate stole Dorian for the next song. The song—fast but familiar—gave them both a chance to brush up on some of their more advanced moves. They did one basic eight-count step just to cement the beat in their minds and bodies, and then they were off. Cross-body lead, under-arm turn, promenade, half-turn, fifth position break—she had no idea where they were or how they’d gotten there. She had to put everything out of her mind just to keep up, to follow without trying to lead.

He finished with a graceful flourish, spinning her until her vision whirled and then flinging her into the open fan with the last beat of castanets. They both panted through their grins, pulses fast in their throats. “I definitely need a drink after that,” her best friend groaned as he led her back to their table, and she nodded in emphatic, exhausted agreement.

Watching the pups and cubs try to salsa made the adults a little wistful for their own early days, even the big bad dominant men. Nate glanced at Lucas without a word, and the alpha snorted. “Don’t even bring it up,” he ordered, but it was a command that the sentinel felt free to disobey.

“I can’t believe it was thirty whole years ago now,” he began with a mischievous grin.

Tammy laughed in delight, already knowing where this was going, but Sascha leaned in with the interest of a woman about to learn a dirty little secret of the man she called her own. “What happened?” she pressed, ready to sink her teeth into a good childhood story.

Lucas thrust his hands through his hair and made to get up, but both Tammy and Sascha grabbed him and pulled him back to the chair.

Nate got comfortable, stretching an arm along the backs of the chairs on either side of him. “When Lucas was five,” he continued with a grin, “even then he had the scent of a future alpha. And he knew it, which made him almost impossible.”

Laughing, Sascha touched her forehead to the curving slope of her mate’s shoulder as he frowned. “I believe that,” she said in little more than a giggle, which made him mime pushing her off (and then he hitched her a little closer to make up for it).

“And he had a handle on the basics of tango, since that was the main dance we did—and still do, obviously—but he decided he was the best dancer ever to grace the Pack ballroom. So he started asking the female soldiers to save him dances.”

Lucas rubbed his temples with exaggerated patience. “It wasn’t the soldiers.”

“Oh, it was!” Tammy corrected him brightly. “I was only eight or so, but I remember that. No waffle-y submissives for our Lucas, no sir.”

He bared his teeth and growled, “I have nothing against submissives, as you well know.”

“Only the best, brightest, fiercest fighters,” she continued with a sigh, as if he hadn’t said anything at all. “It was precious.”

It took very little effort for Sascha to imagine a tiny Lucas, all green eyes and black curls and pudgy cheeks, extending a bossy little hand to women five times his age. To be fair, it also took very little effort for her to imagine the women being charmed enough to take him up on it, though of course after a quick flick on the nose in reproach for trying to boss around his hierarchical superiors.

She grinned at her mate, and he huffed out a sigh, very much a cat putting up with more poking and petting than he wanted.

“But then one night we switched it up, and he and his parents were a little late getting there, so they missed the announcement… that we were only doing salsa that night.” Nate’s eyes cut to Lucas, who was now pretending to be fascinated with the slight curve of his claws jutting out of his fingertips. The sentinel remained unfazed and even went so far as to suggest, “You want to tell the rest of the story, Luc?”

The alpha grumbled low in his throat. Unamused. Unwilling to contribute to his own embarrassment.

Having known full well that that would be the answer, Nate continued, “So he asked his favorite soldier to dance, right off the bat. And she walks out to the dance floor with him… but when he tries to get her arms into the bent-over version of the tango frame, she just _freezes_.”

Tammy’s fingers splayed over her lips to cover her giggles.

“And she leans down,” Nate said with slow, evident relish, “and she says, ‘Lucas, honey, we’re not doing the tango tonight.’” He gave her words the condescending high pitch of a preschool teacher. “And do you know what your mate did?”

Sascha’s jaw hurt from grinning so widely. “What did he do?”

“He stared at her,” he said, maintaining that same serious eye contact with her, “and he said, ‘Well, now we are.’”

Scowl etched into his face, Lucas downed half his beer to the sound of Sascha’s disbelieving and yet honestly unsurprised cackles. “We get it,” he grumbled as he swiped an errant droplet from his mouth. “I was a punk kid. Sascha, let’s go do some salsa. You need to practice.”

She started to rise, but Tammy waved her down. “Oh, sweetie, that’s not the end of the story. He just doesn’t want you to hear the best part.”

 _“Best?”_ he muttered.

Sascha sat back down and looked to Nate. “What else is there?” she prompted, eyes bright with laughter.

In the eternal selflessness of mated pairs, Nate offered, “Tammy, you want to tell it?” To Sascha he added, “It’s her favorite part.”

Tamsyn nodded, beaming. “First,” she said, “I want us all to take a good long look at our brave, tough, sometimes charming leader.”

“Only sometimes?” the alpha complained, but Sascha, Nate, and Tammy were all already looking him over pensively.

“All right.” The healer adjusted her position in her seat as if to obtain maximum comfort for the rest of the retelling. “So the soldier nails him with one of her killer stares, and he kind of fidgets like he knows he just messed up. And she says, out of the kindness of her soul, ‘We’re dancing salsa tonight. You can dance salsa or nothing at all.’ But he’s pouting, and he says, ‘Fine, nothing at all,’ just to throw a fit.”

“I thought she’d just send me back to the table,” he butted in through gritted teeth.

“She didn’t?” Sascha confirmed.

“Oh no, she didn’t.” Tammy cut an evil smile toward the man twice her size. He glared back with poisonless venom that had had thirty years to simmer. “That soldier _picked up_ our five-year-old future alpha, _slung_ him over her shoulder, and carted him back to his parents in front of everyone. And when he tried to charm his way back to the ground, she reached back and _flicked_ him on the forehead.”

The mental image had Sascha’s sides stabbing with cramps from laughter, because not only could she very well imagine an itty bitty Lucas overstepping his bounds and getting the baby treatment, but that mental image was also juxtaposed with her real-life grownup Lucas, and now she was thinking of Mercy or Tammy throwing the full-grown alpha over her shoulder, rolling her eyes with a _this is what I get_ expression on her face… “Tell me there are pictures,” she gasped.

“Better,” Nathan said with a slow grin. “Video.”

An alpha’s glare, negated by the grins and laughter. “I told you to get rid of it.”

“And I respectfully declined.”

Lucas got grabby hands all of a sudden, and Sascha found herself pulled to her feet and pressed against his side. “Okay, thank you for the trip down Memory Lane, but now I’m going to take my _mate_ —who _loves_ and _respects_ me—”

“Yeah, maybe give me a few minutes on the respect thing,” Sascha teased him, but with dominant changeling male pride as fiercely fragile as it was, she slipped one hand over his shoulders and the other under his shirt for skin privileges, claiming an intimate kiss that would dispel any worries he might have harbored about whether or not the story had truly diminished her regard for him.

Lucas’s fingers dug into her hips, and for a moment she worried his feelings had truly been hurt, but her mate was all satisfied cat in the way he kissed her back.

“Now,” he said once she was dizzy on her feet from his touch, “let’s go show those other leopards that we’re the best salsa dancers they’ve ever had the pleasure of looking up to.”

She raised her eyebrows at his aggressive confidence, but she let him tug her out onto the dance floor, and there they twisted and turned in a dance that truly did give the Latin cats a run for their money.


	6. In Which Juvenile!Vaughn Has to Participate and Nate and Tammy Claim Dancers' Skin Privileges

New to the pack as a jaguar-thick preteen boy, Vaughn simmered on the edges of the ballroom, neither comfortable enough to dance nor allowed to leave. _This is part of being in the pack_ , he’d been told, by fond Tamsyn and sulky Lucas and at least three skittish girls his own age. _And we need all the pack time we can get._

That much was true. Vaughn had come in on the verge of DarkRiver dissolving, and while the bonds were unlikely to break at this point, no one wanted to provide the darkness any extra fodder. Therefore, bonding by way of eating and dancing and snuggling and any other _–ing_ word the leopards could think of. And since Vaughn had been adopted into their family, they required him to participate at least peripherally.

So he was here. Not dancing. Not talking. Not even eating (although that part was likely to change soon simply out of cat-high metabolism). Glowering, mostly. He didn’t want to be here, and he had no problem making that clear. It wasn’t like he could dance, anyway, so what was the point?

A round-faced girl with a vivid red bob passed by with a shorter blond boy, both around his own age. Already they had the posture and the moves down pat. The jaguar pressed a little further back into the shadows. Skye’s death had broken the golden glow in him that might have, years ago, made this a very different experience. He was no longer that person.

That dark thought at the forefront of his mind, his eyes went cat at the touch of a hand to his arm.

A snarl rising in his throat, he pulled back and turned to send the offender scurrying. He found himself looking at Juanita, Tamsyn’s friend and an adult soldier, outranking him on multiple levels. He held her gaze as long as he could, then averted it grumpily. “What?”

“We’re dancing.” She left no room for argument. “Move it.”

He resisted, but when she shoved at him, he had no choice but to follow her prodding onto the dance floor. “I don’t know how,” he grumbled as she arranged him like a life-size doll into the correct posture.

“Yeah, yeah,” she said. “And you’re never going to learn, standing off in the corner and looking sullen.”

 _I’m okay with that,_ he thought but didn’t say.

“Chest up,” she ordered, and hierarchy required him to obey. “Use your hands to lead me where you want me to go.”

“I’m leading?” The almost future-alpha-dominant jaguar maturing inside him went wide-eyed at the blatant opportunity to exercise closer skin privileges and limited dominance over his hierarchical superior. Was this a trick?

She narrowed her eyes. “No trick.” She explained to his the basic rhythm, the order of the steps, and then she started them off, pulling backward so he had to walk forward. “Don’t look at your feet. Stay up. It helps you balance.”

Scowl deepening as he stumbled, he nonetheless took her advice and kept his head high and chest out as if being pulled up by a marionette string. Uncomfortable. Mostly because it wasn’t in his muscle memory the way it clearly was for the rest of them.

She shoved at his tense shoulder. “Relax a little.” But when he forced himself to go lazy, she bared her teeth in playful reprimand. “Not that much!”

“How much, then?” he complained, fumbling to find the good middle ground she wanted.

She shook her head and reiterated all the same principles of good posture from two minutes ago. “Try to keep your shoulders back. And down. That’ll help.”

“That’s what you said about keeping my head up,” he grumbled as he pushed his shoulder blades together.

Nita snarled without any real venom. “I hope one day you mate with someone who causes as much trouble as you.”

Vaughn had no interest in mating, but even he knew this was not the time to point this out. Instead they moved through the basic steps of the tango over and over, eventually progressing to her teaching him how to lead her through an under-arm turn. By the end of the night, he had relaxed in truth. And the next Friday, it only took a little prodding for him to agree to join the dance party, and a little more for him to claim a dance with Mercy Smith, who was much more advanced than he but enthusiastic and flexible in working with his few moves.

Later, during a song that had all the upper-level dominants taking the floor, Vaughn filled a plate with snacks and sat down beside Lucas, his closest friend in the pack. The leopard had to finish up the half a brownie in his mouth but, as soon as his airways were free, all but jumped on Vaughn. “Thanks for coming out again.”

“A few people threatened to send me to SnowDancer if I didn’t,” the jaguar replied drily, “so I don’t know if it counts as my choice.”

Lucas knew full well that Vaughn wouldn’t be there if he didn’t want to be. “We’ve all gotten the same treatment,” he sympathized. “The female soldiers are terrifying.” This admission surprised a small laugh from Vaughn, and Lucas grinned. “Hey, want me to run you through a couple other moves you can throw in? It’s way more fun that way.”

His pride would have burned at taking instruction if it weren’t for the fact that he knew he was a pretty poor partner right now. It only took him a second to decide. “Yeah, that’d be cool. Thanks.”

****

Tammy had barely tugged on her second shoe when a familiar hand extended toward her. She looked up and felt her entire body light up at the sight of Nathan Ryder.

“Ready?” he checked with a grin, wiggling his fingers in invitation.

“Yes, of course.” With him twenty-four and her not quite fifteen, their friendship was a safe place, uncomplicated by romance. However, her cat constantly stretched toward his for skin privileges, and tango night made up most of the close physical contact they could get without toeing any lines. So they showed up early and stayed late, and although he had plenty of female admirers he took out onto the dance floor, he always saved the first and last dances for Tammy. That, and several more scattered throughout the evening. For a teenage girl barely comfortable in her own skin, the attention made her glow from the inside out.

She slipped her hand into his, her other hand skimming self-consciously over her new violet dress, and he smiled reassuringly at her as he tugged her across the way. “You look nice.”

A relieved sigh. “Really?” _Nice_ wasn’t exactly _ravishing_ , but at this moment she’d take any adjective that didn’t mean _kill it with fire_. And Nathan didn’t lie to her.

“Yeah.” His right hand slid to her bare upper back, a familiar warm touch that soothed the tiny edges of touch hunger. She relaxed into her good posture as she slipped her left hand over his shoulder. Just as she turned her head to look up and out as if in a balcony scene, Lucas passed by, pivoting as closely with Mercy as the redhead would let him.

“Hey, Tammy!” he called with a grin. “Why so stationary?”

“You better watch it,” she warned him, and it wasn’t personal defense—he had to yank Mercy off to the side to avoid running into her parents. Lia and Michael laughed and chided his poor directional control, Mercy’s face flushed to match her hair, and Lucas pushed her back into motion as quickly as he could without offending the Smiths. Tammy laughed too, and so did Nate when she related the occurrence to him.

They spun in perfect synchronization through the first song, and then the second, because (Nate claimed) they didn’t start until halfway through the first song anyway and had therefore been cheated of their rightful dance time. He sat her down and took Juanita out, and Tammy had to lean back and catch her breath. Watching him move wasn’t exactly conducive to that, but, well, she tried.

She talked a little with Finn, who was visiting for a week, but her mind jumbled out of the conversation when Nate dropped into the chair beside her and handed her a glass of water. “I’m beat,” the young soldier laughed, draining half of his own glass. “It’s only 8:30. I don’t know how I’m going to manage the whole night.”

“Maybe if you stopped coming by for half a batch of double chocolate chip cookies every morning…” Tammy suggested, all in play. He was in the best shape of his life and only getting better; they both knew his daily stop for a pastry or two wasn’t hurting him.

He laughed again, which had been her goal. Her smile widened.

Finn caught the eye of a maternal girl over by the lounge and rose from his seat, all teenage male ego. “Save my seat, Tam. I have a sudden need to tango.”

She turned and saw the girl’s sweet side-eyed smile. “Ahhh. Yeah, I would too,” she teased. “Go get ’em, tiger.”

“You _wish_ I were a tiger,” he threw over his shoulder, a reference to the rare and therefore ultra-cool tiger changelings.

But then he was gone, and it was just Nathan and Tamsyn at their table… and on impulse she leaned her head on his shoulder. Her leopard purred, and based on the fact that he only shifted to give her a more comfortable position, she figured his wasn’t exactly upset about the contact either.

“You catch your breath yet?” they both asked at the same time, and then grinned at each other.

“Yeah, my feet don’t hurt yet either, which is nice,” she admitted. (She was well aware that once they did, she could beg a foot massage from Nate and he’d give it to her. Their friendship brightened her life in more ways than one.) “After swing night last week, my calves _killed_. It’s nice to be back to tango.”

He nodded in emphatic agreement. She felt his muscles move under her cheek. “Definitely my favorite.”

They sat in comfortable silence through the rest of the song, happy just to be close and to watch the others twirling and progressing and dipping and pivoting to their hearts’ content. When the next one began, he tugged her back out for another round—unexpected but glorious.

When the mating bond snapped into being on her fifteenth birthday, tango nights went from fun to the most intimate skin privileges she could convince her mate to share.

But after Nate finally opened the bond, not only did they wholeheartedly embrace all skin privileges, dancers’ included, but they also became one of the most impressive pairs on the dance floor.


	7. In Which Colonial Dance Bests Predatory Changelings

The occasional night of waltz or foxtrot or swing changed up the “monotony” of tango. Cats, wolves, and non-changeling packmates alike learned to keep up with the alternate styles of dancing, although tango remained the favorite choice across the board.

What destroyed that record of adaptability… was the introduction of English country ball dancing.

_Colonial dance._

The newfound bane of both DarkRiver _and_ SnowDancer.

“What on God’s green earth is a _sashay?”_ demanded Mercy loudly, her grip on Riley’s forearm tightening so hard her claws pricked at his skin. He gave a warning growl, and she released him with an apology. “Is that like a front to back?”

“And why is it the same every time?” asked Drew plaintively, turning his big sad eyes on the female instructor. “Why can’t we change it up?”

The two instructors, a male and a female whose names Mercy had somehow missed, shared a jaw-clenched look that was all too easy to read. “English country dancing,” explained the man in stiff, slow exaggerated patience, “is not freestyled like Latin and ballroom dances. It has a set pattern. You adhere to the pattern. The same way every time. Yes.”

The woman, who seemed predictably susceptible to Drew’s sad face, allowed a little more sympathy for their confusion. “That’s just the way it is. You learn the pattern and then you repeat it. It’s sort of like how you learn the basic steps and then mix them up how you want… minus the mixing part. Historically, they used the time to converse. It was very social.”

“The _tango_ is social,” Lucas complained to Sascha. “Colonial dance is a freaking cookie cutter routine, designed to bore everyone’s brain cells to death.” She covered her mouth with one hand to hide her agreeing laughter.

“Let’s just go through the first few steps again,” suggested the male instructor, and he gave them little time to set the two lines back up before he played the music. The men faced their women, and at the first sound of the fiddles half of them jumped forward for the do-si-do, a few tried to do a left-hand turn, and the others froze in a complete mental blank.

“Okay, no music.” The female instructor turned it off and, having somehow aged thirty years in the past thirty minutes, walked them all through the first steps in triple slow motion.

Indigo at least was making a professional effort to understand their current curriculum, the Virginia reel, but even _her_ patience was wearing thin. “All right, can you run that part before the reel by us again? How is it supposed to go? It seems like we’re just running into each other.”

“Don’t forget forgetting which line to twirl,” pointed out Hawke in little more than a snarl, having been redirected in that particular step three times in a row—and then having growled at the men who made the same mistake and tried to hook arms with _him_.

“Let’s just twirl all the time and sometimes make a bridge,” suggested Mercy in a deceptively bright voice. The happy, high-pitched voice that signaled severe danger for anyone who tried to get in her way.

Riley slipped his hands around her waist and pulled her back against his chest. “Think of the pupcubs,” he murmured soothingly in her ear, one hand spanning protectively over her still-flat stomach.

“I don’t want our Snow leopards to grow up in a world that forces them to learn the _worst_ _dance_ _ever_ _imagined_ ,” she snarled at him, a rare show of temper in the normally good-natured pregnancy.

“Maybe you should sit down for a little.”

“Maybe colonial dance should actually _make sense for five minutes!”_

Giving up on consoling her, Riley wove his fingers into her hair and petted her, his cheek pressed against hers, until she settled back down.

The instructors leaned in for a short whispered conference, and by the time they separated, they both looked like they would murder a man for a strong cup of coffee. Or whiskey. “How about,” suggested the man in a transparently false positive voice, “we let go of the Virginia reel for now and try something a little… simpler?”

Cats’ eyes narrowed. Wolves bristled. A moment passed in which the tension of dominant predatory pride could have been bottled and sold for a profit.

“Fine,” grumbled Lucas and Hawke at the same time.

In unison, the instructors wilted a fraction in relief.

“We’re going to try the Grand March,” announced the woman with a too wide smile that better resembled the grimace of restrained tears or homicide. “It starts out with everyone in a single line.”

Mated pairs immediately reached out and grabbed each other’s hands, laying claim to the person they wanted beside them. Mercy laced her fingers with Riley’s and then snagged Dorian’s free hand. He pretended to want to pull away, then squeezed her hand in reassuring friendly play. She relaxed at the skin privileges with her two favorite men that weren’t related to her by blood.

“It’s basically just Follow the Leader, okay? Billy will lead.”

“Oh, _that’s_ his name?” Ashaya asked in a hushed tone, which made Mercy cough to cover up a cackle. “I missed that somehow.” She wasn’t the only one. A few changelings heard her and ducked their heads to nod in lowkey agreement.

“I hate the name Billy,” muttered Dorian.

“Do you think we can somehow trick her into telling us what _her_ name is?” Mercy considered with an analytical glance.

The woman, who unfortunately did not seem to feel the semi-telepathic pressure to provide them with her name, waved for them all to file into the single line. Some pairs faced left and others right, and she pulled out her most Patient voice when she reminded them that—logically speaking—people in a line always needed to face the same way. A little shuffling, a little muttered swearing, and everyone eventually was facing the left side of the room. Lucas was at the head of the line, much to Hawke’s glowering disapproval, and so it was he who had to take Billy the instructor’s sweaty hand. The cat alpha almost hissed in distaste, but it was too late to reorder. Sascha sent him some sympathy through the mating bond, and then the music began.

Long used to the smooth, long steps of the tango and the tiny Latin steps of salsa, the jolt of just walking felt like being on stilts. Riley in particular, who walked heavily anyway, felt as though he was swinging bricks on the ends of his legs instead of feet. _Is this really how it’s supposed to go?_ he wondered in disbelief. It seemed so... graceless. And that was coming from a man who resembled a stone wall so much he’d been nicknamed for it.

The line, which had been following the perimeter of the room, began to double on itself, creating a smaller circle inside the larger one. Then another. More confused swearing, louder this time. “What is this?” growled Rina.

“It’ll be fine!” called the woman, her voice strained and thin. “Just keep following the person in front of you!”

“This is horrible! What the heck!” Mercy yowled, prompting her mate to speed up for a second to kiss the curve of her neck. She nipped back at him, unwilling to be placated. And his extra burst of speed, which in a _normal_ dance wouldn’t have affected anyone but his one partner, unintentionally dragged everyone behind him in line along with him. Faith stumbled trying to keep up on her shorter legs, and Vaughn automatically released Ashaya’s hand to catch his mate.

But this broke the chain, and the packmates stuck behind the foreseer and the jaguar bumped into each other trying to keep from bumping into them, and the unnamed female instructor hastily, almost tearfully called for Vaughn to take Ashaya’s hand again and for the love of God _stop licking Faith_. Even Clay snorted at the sheer obliviousness of that request, and Tally chastised him, “Not everyone understands the _freakishly animalistic_ public displays of affection that are normal within the pack, you bully.”

“I’ll give you ‘freakishly animalistic,’ brat,” he deadpanned, which was six more words than he’d said so far all afternoon, and then he was thrusting his hand through her hair and mouthing at her pulse and the female instructor was calling _please you need to keep moving for the dance to work PLEASE MOVE_.

Eventually Clay and Vaughn removed their mouths from their mates (despite the soft vocal complaints from both women) and hustled to rejoin the line that was already halfway around the room, but they were facing the wrong way again. “Other way!” snapped Billy, who was apparently running out of patience. Glaring at his tone, they let go, turned, and took hands again.

Once he reached the middle of the room, there were three spirals of that single line circling around him, and for some godforsaken reason he _turned around and started going the other way_ , which made every stressed-out dancer in the room growl in loud confused complaint.

“No! _No!_ Turn your little self around, _Billy!”_

“What are you doing!”

“That’s not the right direction!”

“Where the heck are we supposed to go now!”

“Who decided this was a good idea!”

“Just keep following me,” he snarled at the top of his lungs. Incidentally, he was forceful enough that he did a pretty good impression of a bossy changeling male, and it registered enough that the students listened.

Unfortunately, _listening_ to instructions and getting bodies to _cooperate_ with said instructions are often two different things. Eyes widened each time another person rounded that bend in the middle and started going back out against the grain of the line. A few stumbles almost knocked the entire line to the ground, but the changeling grace and speed meant they caught themselves, adjusted to save everyone from introducing the floor to their faces, and danced a little swing rock step to get back to business.

“That was… actually a pretty good catch,” muttered the female instructor, mouth curving down and eyebrows jumping in surprise at the fact that they’d managed _anything_ in relation to colonial dance. Dorian snarled, hearing her and hating the clear implication that he—or anyone else—was subpar. Her eyes flicked to him, but she could only hold his gaze for a few seconds before averting hers. Dominance.

That was their only real accomplishment for a while. Billy, in his infinite wisdom, decided to lead them in a “split outside,” which meant that he split the line off in two different directions, and not only did he break away from the line to direct each approaching dancer to the proper side, he failed to take into account the changeling near-inability to let anyone else dance with their mates. Especially not when they’d expected to stay with the same partner for the entire dance, as any standard, _sane_ dance did.

So the moment he said, “One to the left, then one to the right, alternating,” the entire line all but screeched to a halt.

“Are you _kidding_ me?” hissed a young adult cat whose mating was only days old. “No freakin’ way, man!”

Billy’s shoulders stiffened until they were practically hanging from his ears. _“One on each side.”_

The music continued to play, but no one was moving. Mates gripped each other’s hands until their claws pricked out.

“Okay, let’s try _two_ on each side,” suggested the female teacher in an _it’s not a suggestion_ voice after a solid thirty seconds passed and no one was compromising. “It’s standard anyway.”

The urge to murder faded from the men’s eyes. Billy hissed out a long, slow breath between clenched teeth. “Fine. Two per side. Let’s go. Thankfully this is a long song.” This last part was said half to himself, and the woman shot him a dark _watch yourself_ look. _A job is a job,_ her glare read clearly. _You can deal with this for an hour._

So Lucas and Sascha went left, and Hawke and Sienna went right, but instead of going left Tammy and Nate went right. “No, no! Left!” called the woman, waving her hands at them from the back of the line.

Grumbling and laughing at the same time, the healer and her sentinel mate hustled across the floor to their alpha. Billy stared down the row at his coworker with dead eyes. “Gretch. Why.”

Short for Gretchen. Mercy squeezed Riley’s and Dorian’s hands in case they’d missed the big reveal of the other teacher’s name. _Gretch and Billy. Gretch and Billy,_ she repeated. She had to remember the names so she would know who to avoid in the future.

The two separating lines grew lopsided, with a few more pairs accidentally going in the wrong direction and failing to heed Gretch’s calls to correct the oversight. Lucas got down to the end and had no one to meet him, so he simply kept going, pulling Sascha, Nate, Tammy, and everyone else along with him across the room and into another circle.

Billy, who was busy directing traffic, noticing the aberration too late. When he did, he looked as if he’d swallowed a live fish. “No—no—” The words cut off in a strangled choke, and he gestured hopelessly with his hands. “You know what, fine. Just… go around the hall. Then we’ll do a hook on.”

Hawke scowled so deeply that Sienna snickered and smoothed her hands over his back. At Gretch’s direction, he had to trot to catch up to Ashaya for what was apparently called a hook on, and then when she extended her free hand he caught it with his. The two lopsided lines were one again, albeit with two or three pairs somehow facing the wrong way again. “How does this even _happen?”_ grumbled Mercy as she did a quick little turning half step to get herself back in the right direction without causing a mass collision.

When the Grand March, which could have more accurately been renamed the Grand Mess, finally concluded, Gretch and Billy wasted no time in moving on, likely so that their already irritable students wouldn’t dwell on the spectacular failures. “We’re going to do the Irish Washerwoman next,” said Gretch with forced brightness, “and it’s a pretty active one, so maybe it’ll get some blood flowing and get our endorphins going.”

Unimpressed packmates cast each other dark, disbelieving looks. _I’ll believe that when I see it._

The instructors organized them in rows of two, clusters of four, and then took them through the basic steps. All couples counted off one, two, one, two. All men and women side-stepped across the set and did a left-right-left-together jig called a rigadoon, then repeated in the opposite direction to return to their original places. Each pair spun slowly with hands on the smalls of each other’s backs in a clockwise allemande, then again counterclockwise. The first pair sashayed sideways down the set for four counts, then back and cast off around the second pair, who stepped up to the first pair’s original position. The two pairs held hands and turned in a complete circle, and then they _immediately_ jumped back into the beginning with a sashay and rigadoon.

Gretch had been right—even for the seasoned, in-shape soldiers, all the hopping and kicking of the Irish washerwoman had them breathing a little harder after the three rounds required within the span of one song. What she hadn’t accounted for was that the cramped quarters made it deliciously easy for wolves and cats to “accidentally” kick each other with an enthusiastic rigadoon. A few times, too, the sashay toward the end of the dance sent the rigadooning pair just far enough to break into the next cluster’s space. More than once, the dancers had to be arranged so that they could actually dance and not spend the entire time pretending it was coincidence that they kept kicking each other.

The Irish washerwoman was actually a hit. Or, more accurately, a kick. The instructors made the wise decision to let the class just ride out on the high of dancing in tiny jumps and giving each other minor bruises.

The clock moved to the hour with an inaudible (to anyone but changelings) tick. Lucas and Hawke shared a look across the room and, with two cool nods, broke off to head up two lines that then proceeded to… do their own thing.

“Thank you for your time,” the panther said smoothly to the two harried instructors. “We appreciate your patience.”

Several loud growls from the general populace directly contradicted this statement. He ignored them.

“Your payment has been transferred. We’ll let you know if we require your services again.” A neutral tone, a professional dismissal.

The colonial dance instructors nodded and all but kicked up dust in their scramble to get out of there as quickly as they could. Toeing the line in frustrating the top dominants in California’s two leading predatory packs was way above their pay grade, and they knew it.

To the dancers’ credit, when Lucas turned around, the split-off groups were all practicing the new dance steps they’d learned. They weren’t trying any particular dance—just an amalgamation of the moves as they liked them. Vaughn, Nate, Mercy, Indigo, and their mates were turning in a star promenade while Brenna, Hawke, Clay, Dorian, and their mates were do-si-doing in infinite circles. Other clusters were “perfecting” their rigadoons and trying to debate the proper method of reeling.

“That was probably not the best representation of our packs,” Lucas mused as he returned to Sascha’s side and pulled her into an offbeat skipping sashay.

She grimaced and shook her head. “Probably not, no. To be fair, the Grand March was utter chaos. I doubt even professional dancers could have fully recovered from that.”

He laughed. “Maybe not.” He took her into his arms and spun her. Despite the endless frustration of the afternoon, it was a definitely colonial, not Latin, move. “I wish we could have been better, though. We’re all good dancers, and most of us can be charming when we want to be.” He raised his voice to add, “Except maybe Hawke.”

The wolf alpha snarled from a few feet away, and his mate caught the sound in her mouth with a kiss. “You big baby,” Sienna teased him in a low tone, the words only for him. “You just can’t resist rising to his taunts, can you.”

He huffed, eyes closer to wolf than man. “Kid’s a punk.”

“You’re the one that gave his baby a stuffed wolf. It’s pretty even, I’d say.” She didn’t call him out on the use of _kid_ —she knew full well that the men weren’t that distant in age. The diminutive term was only another dominance play, and a pretty gentle one at that.

Her mind went elsewhere, scanning the moving bodies in the room, reviewing the lessons they’d butchered. From the memories she pulled and the patterns that had felt familiar, touches of déjà vu, and she suddenly realized: “Colonial dance would actually make really good close-combat training. Working in a close pattern, that sort of thing.”

Hawke ducked his head to check her forehead for a fever and her night-sky eyes for a glaze. “You sure you’re feeling okay?” he teased.

She swatted at him. “Yes, thank you.”

“Colonial dance isn’t good for anything other than driving decent dancers up the wall.”

Indigo, however, had overheard and perked up. “You know, it does make sense actually.”

Of course the lieutenant understood. She found deep joy in working her trainees to the ground with the harshest possible techniques… or maybe that had just been what Sienna had required. The redhead cracked a smile.

And when the others started muttering in consideration of this, she knew she'd just thrown something into motion.


End file.
